


all the stars above our heads

by independentwriter137



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: F/M, kinda slowburn, multi-chap that reads like an extended one-shot, partial character study, set during season 1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24002812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/independentwriter137/pseuds/independentwriter137
Summary: In which everyone knows Tsunemori Akane and Kougami Shinya are dating…except for Tsunemori Akane and Kougami Shinya.
Relationships: Karanomori Shion/Kunizuka Yayoi, Kougami Shinya/Tsunemori Akane, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 136





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Second PP fic, yay! So this is based in season 1, but no one dies and Kougami doesn't leave (though you could also read this as taking place sometime mid-season and cannon continues on as usual after).
> 
> This will probably have 3 chapters? Updates will alternate with my Pacific Rim AU. Also, the title is taken from a Matt Nathanson song. Enjoy!

It starts with a stakeout.

Well, technically speaking, it starts with rain and a girl and a shot to the spine, with hospital apologies and a renewed sense of purpose. Perhaps it even starts before that, long before they ever officially meet, inevitably pulled together and bound by fate, but that’s neither here nor there at the moment, especially given Akane’s near certainty that time has crawled to a stop inside the walls of the police car.

She resists the urge to glance at her watch as she shifts in her seat, trying to regain some feeling in her legs. The rhythmic beat of the rain and the late hour make her sleepy, and the lights from neon street signs are starting to blur together. There have been reports of someone illegally selling faulty hue-clearing drugs in the area, but the streets have been relatively empty these past few hours.

 _Everyone’s probably warm at home with a hot bowl of noodles,_ Akane thinks a little wistfully. Her stomach grumbles. She was supposed to get dinner with Yuki and Kaori tonight, but she had to cancel on them _again_ though the emptiness of her stomach is more pressing right now than her guilt.

Trying to distract herself, her eyes dart from the holos flickering in the rain to Kougami’s deceptively relaxed posture next to her. Though his arms are tucked almost lazily behind his head, his eyes are alert, watchful as always. If the waiting game is getting to him, it doesn’t show. He’s barely moved since the stakeout started, spoken even less.

The silence hasn’t been uncomfortable per se, but Akane can’t say she’s completely at ease either. She has always found Kougami’s presence equal parts reassuring and disconcerting. There’s a magnetic quality to him, something that draws you in and sets your teeth a little on edge at the same time. A few months of working together and he still leaves her at a loss, like she’s trying to piece together the puzzle of him but she’s lacking the necessary pieces.

Ginoza would probably tell her she’s better off never understanding Kougami, that it’s not her job to solve but to observe from a safe distance, to oversee without ever really _seeing._ She knows, on some level, that he’s probably right and _yet_ …

She sighs.

_And yet._

Half cloaked in darkness and half illuminated by the streetlights, Kougami’s profile is full of sharp lines and even sharper eyes, almost like a warning against getting too close. A wolf with prey in mind once again, it seems, and Akane can’t look away.

 _“You spend more time with your subordinate than with us nowadays,”_ Yuki had pouted when Akane canceled again, the words echoing in her mind now. _“It’s almost like you’re in a relationship or something.”_

 _“With work!”_ Akane had protested, cheeks blazing, but even now she’s unsure if Yuki was actually listening to her.

It’s the reminder she needs to turn her attention back to the streets and focus. She even succeeds for what might be a few seconds or minutes or hours before her attention drifts back to her watch. Somehow both restless and exhausted, she gives in to the urge and checks the time as surreptitiously as she can.

“So how much longer?” Kougami asks, his voice startling her.

She blinks, not fully processing the question right away. “Huh?”

The corner of his mouth quirks up in amusement. “How much longer before the relief team gets here?”

“Oh,” she says. “Ginoza-san and Kagari-kun should be here in a little less than an hour.”

“Think you can hold out ‘til then?”

“Pardon?”

“You’ve checked your watch seven times in the past ten minutes.”

Her cheeks flush. Of course he noticed. “I—I was just—”

“Relax,” he says. “This is your first stakeout, isn’t it? Sitting on your ass for hours on end would be enough to bore anyone. Don’t tell Gino I told you, but I heard he fell asleep his first time around.”

She forgets her own embarrassment for a second, stifling her snicker at the mental image of a young Ginoza with crooked glasses trying and failing to stay awake.

“Look, Kagari’s the one with all the car games and songs, but I guess I could’ve been a little more…engaging,” he sighs. “Sometimes I forget you’re still technically a rookie.” His gaze is softer when he glances at her, the change so subtle that she wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t paying attention. His expression no longer lines up with the image of the wolf, and the desire to make sense of him gnaws at her again.

It’s this desire, she supposes, that fuels her next words. “Let’s play 20 questions then.”

“20 questions?”

“Well, 19 now for you. You’ve wasted one,” she teases.

He narrows his eyes at her, but the small smile on his face is more apparent than it was before. “Game’s barely started and you’re already playing dirty, Inspector.” He stretches his arms over his head before turning his attention back to the street. “Alright then, ask away.”

A dozen questions immediately spring to mind, all of which are too heavy or too personal for a silly game of 20 questions. She tries to think of something less intrusive and eventually settles for the generic question. “What’s your favorite color?” 

He snorts. “Of all the things you could ask, you ask about color,” he deadpans.

“Maybe I’m just trying to lure you into a false sense of security to catch you off guard later.”

“Crafty. Didn’t realize you’d be busting out the interrogation tactics.”

“But 20 questions _is_ its own form of interrogation, isn’t it?”

“Fair point,” Kougami concedes. Then, his brow furrows, giving the question more thought than she expected. “Can’t really say I have one, but I guess I’m partial to red.”

Memories of over-300 crime coefficients, grotesquely contorted and bloated bodies, and violent eruptions of skin and bone and tissue that are red, red, _red_ flash unbidden through her mind.

Whatever expression she wears turns the twist of his mouth wry. She wishes she wasn’t so easy to read.

“Not quite the shade we encounter so often in our line of work though,” he says.

She considers lying, saying that she wasn’t thinking about _that_ shade at all, but quickly dismisses the thought. Instead, she asks, “What shade then?”

“Are follow-up questions deductible from the 20?” he asks, but there’s no bite to his words and Akane knows he’s not really expecting her to answer. He’s stalling as he sifts through his thoughts, weighing which ones to vocalize and which ones to keep to himself. She vaguely wonders what he’d say without his filter always firmly in place.

“The red of tsubaki in spring,” he says eventually. “Mama likes gardening, and they’re her favorite flowers.”

Akane tugs on a lock of hair, ashamed to have been thinking of something so dark earlier. _What was he like as a child_? she wonders. A younger, happier Kougami that could laugh loudly, that could run as fast and as far as he wanted, that could come home to a garden full of tsubaki—such a strange, almost foreign thought, but one she imagines vividly and tucks close to her heart.

“That sounds lovely,” she says, and Kougami hums in agreement.

“And you, Inspector?” he asks.

“Oh. Yellow, I guess, like the soft yellow of first morning light. Pink’s a close second though,” she says. “I like bright colors.”

“I’ve noticed,” he says, and Akane’s mortified when she feels heat rising to her cheeks.

“Favorite book?” she blurts out as she turns her head to hide her blush.

He doesn’t hesitate to answer this time. “ _The Long Walk_ or _The Running Man.”_

“You running away from something, Kougami-san?”

“Aren’t we all?” he muses. “Or maybe it’s the opposite. Running towards something instead of running away.”

“Is that what the books are about?”

“Among other things. They’re both by Stephen King. Ever heard of him?”

The name rings a bell, but nothing concrete enough to mention, so she shakes her head.

“He was a prolific writer during the late twentieth to the early twenty-first century. You read thrillers?”

Akane shrugs. “I read just about anything. Usually, I just browse through the bestsellers—when I’m not reading case files, anyway. I’ll see if I can get an ebook.”

Scoffing, he says, “You won’t find it. I doubt King’s work is Sybil approved. You’re welcome to borrow my copy if you really want to give it a shot. I’d warn you about the content potentially affecting your hue, but your hue’s almost impossible to cloud.”

“It has to be. If it was easy to cloud, then I wouldn’t be an Inspector,” she says without thinking, then winces when her brain finally catches up to her mouth. “Ah! That was rude. I meant—”

“It’s okay. I know what you meant,” he says. He pulls out his pack of Spinels and fiddles with his lighter while she kicks herself for putting her foot in her mouth _again._

“Still,” she protests, “I shouldn’t be so thoughtless. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You’re direct, not intentionally harsh. You see the world for how it is and you accept it. Makes sense that you have a tendency for telling it the way it is too. Never apologize for that,” he says.

The tip of his cigarette glows once he lights it. He takes a deep drag before exhaling. Gesturing vaguely to the view outside the window, he continues, “The way I see it, most of our world’s hiding behind holos and other illusions, pretending to be anything other than what it is. Our society could do with fewer filters.”

She lets his words sink in and wash away any lingering guilt. Akane opens her mouth to reply, but the words stick in her throat and she’s not sure how much sense they’d make if they made it past her lips anyway. She shakes her head and sits a little straighter in her seat. “Alright then,” she says quietly. “Do you—”

She gets cut off when her wristcomm goes off, the picture of Ginoza’s stern face glaring at her from the interface.

“Inspector Tsunemori,” Ginoza says in lieu of a greeting when she answers the call. “Enforcer Kagari and I will be there to relieve you of your post in a couple of minutes.”

“Right. Of course,” she says, feeling oddly disappointed that the hour passed by much quicker than expected.

“Is there anything to report?” Ginoza asks.

“No, sir. It’s been a quiet night.”

“Alright. We’ll be arriving shortly,” Ginoza says, and the call ends.

Akane sighs, realizing the rain stopped at some point, though she can’t remember when. “Looks like we’re not going to make it to 20 questions after all,” she says, keeping her tone light despite her disappointment.

Kougami takes another drag of his cigarette and shrugs. “You’ve still got to drop me off at the MWPSB. We could still do a few more then put a raincheck on however many questions are left.” Smirking slightly, he says, “Besides, Inspector, it’s my turn to ask. You’re not getting out of answering that easily.”

She doesn’t mean to grin as wide as she does, but she doesn’t make an effort to hide it either this time. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she says. “Ask away, Kougami-san.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place months after the first chapter, so Kou and Akane have been working together for a while now. Took a bit longer to get this out than expected, but I am very glad to share it with all of you! Hope you enjoy!

Akane hasn’t been to a club before, Sybil-sanctioned or otherwise, but she assumes this must be one of the seedier ones. The music is too loud, making the walls vibrate as if the room is humming along. The room is somehow both poorly lit and too bright, and not even the display holo can mask the stickiness of the floor against her heels. Not exactly her scene, but it’s not like she’s here for leisure.

The band isn’t bad though, and she can see Kunizuka in the table she shares with Kagari nodding her head appreciatively to the music.

Akane sits straighter in her seat and sweeps her gaze across the room, trying to discern one face from another from the crowd. A patient recently escaped from a nearby rehabilitation facility, careful to avoid street scanners but a few hidden street cams captured him frequenting this area.

“Any luck?” Kougami asks, carrying two drinks in hand. He slides her lemonade over to her then sits across from her in their booth.

She shakes her head, eyes still on the crowd. “Not at all. It’s hard to see anyone clearly in here,” she says, trying to talk over the music. “We’ve got Ginoza-san and Masaoka-san watching the entrances and exits though, so at least we know we can’t lose him.”

Kougami nods, leaning back and absentmindedly taps his fingers along to the music.

For a while, they just watch the crowd dance. It would be peaceful if it wasn’t so noisy.

 _“Geez, Akane-chan, you and Shinya are supposed to be undercover, but you couldn’t look more like cops if you tried,”_ Shion says into her earpiece and Akane chokes on her lemonade.

 _“No one on a date looks like that. Well, at least none of_ my _dates ever looked like that. Show the girl a good time, won’t you, Shinya?”_

Akana deliberately does _not_ look at Kougami as she pretends the redness of her cheeks is from her coughing fit and not Shion’s teasing. She glares in the general direction of the security cameras and Shion laughs lightly in her ear.

_“Even Yayoi and Shusei are doing better than you two.”_

And, well, damn. Shion’s not _wrong._

Akane looks back at Kunizuka and Kagari, who seem to be chatting amicably though Kunizuka is considerably less animated and considerably more exasperated. She knows them well enough to recognize the way they carefully track the crowd’s movements even as they clink their glasses together. As far as appearances go, they look like two ordinary people going out, and no one would give them a second glance, much less assume they’re a couple of Enforcers.

She finally works up the nerve to sneak a glance back at Kougami, only to find he’s already watching her. She feels the heat in her cheeks intensify.

“So I—um—I guess—so what do you do for a living?” she asks, immediately cringing afterward.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “What I do for a living,” he repeats slowly, clearly amused.

Akane sighs, drawing a frowny face in the condensation of her glass in frustration. She’s been working at the MWPSB for almost a year now and she thought her days of being flustered on the job were over.

“Sorry,” she says, picking on the piece of peeling faux leather of her seat. “I know we’re supposed to be on a date and all, but I’ve never actually been on one. Yuki uses that Sybil dating app sometimes and I _have_ seen movies, obviously, and that’s usually one of the first questions they ask, so I just blurted it out, which, I admit, doesn’t actually make any sense since we already know each other and all, but—”

A light flick on the forehead snaps her out of her ramble, and she blinks to find Kougami with his elbows propped up on the table between them, much closer than he was before. It’s probably the closest they’ve ever been without being in imminent danger.

“You wasted a question, Inspector,” he says.

“What?” she says, slightly dazed from their proximity and the hints of blue in his eyes.

“20 questions. You had 15 left, and now you’ve wasted one.”

The statement doesn’t click at first, and it takes her a moment to remember. A rainy night, a stakeout, and talk of a garden full of tsubaki from one of her earlier days as a detective. A quiet night compared to all the high-intensity cases they handle daily.

Something warm and soft unfurls in her chest, and she finds she doesn’t quite know what to say. Though it happens less and less often these days, there are moments like this that still leave her at a loss—when she doesn’t know how to reconcile the Kougami with razor-sharp instincts and even sharper teeth when on a hunt and the Kougami who pulls her out of her own head with a pat or a tap or nudge, comforting and encouraging in his own way.

Still, after months and months of working with him, she knows by now that she never has any reason to be afraid of anything around him. Her momentary panic a while ago seems ridiculous now. The pressure in her chest eases considerably and it’s easier to breathe.

She smiles. “You remembered,” she says, unable to keep the fondness from her voice and unsure if she really wants to. He doesn’t say anything, just leans back in his seat, but she’s learning to read his silences too.

“I guess it’s your turn, Kougami-san,” she says.

He swirls the drink inside his glass, scanning the crowd for their escapee. “Doubt this set-up’s your ideal for a first date,” he says, and she laughs. “So,” he continues, “what’s the ideal look like?”

Akane pretends to let her gaze wander aimlessly as she thinks, watching as the neon flashes light up every other face in the club. “I’ve never actually given it much thought,” she says honestly, trying to think of what her version of a perfect first date might be like and coming up empty.

“It’s not that I have an aversion to dating or anything,” she clarifies, “but it’s not like anyone ever caught my eye, so I never felt like I was missing out on anything. There was always something more important to think about, you know? First, it was school, then the aptitude exams, then it was picking a job, and then starting a job, and now…” she trails off, thinking of the never-ending stream of cases and the long hours on the job both in and out of the office and her increasing difficulty in trying to separate the personal and professional when it comes to the bonds she’s formed in Division 1.

“And now,” Kougami echoes, a wry smile on his face and she knows he understands.

“And now,” she agrees with a sigh. “That doesn’t mean my parents will stop pestering me about getting a boyfriend though, so maybe I should start giving it some thought after all.”

She takes another sip of her lemonade, savoring its sweet tartness. “This isn’t so bad though,” she says softly.

She’s not sure if her voice carries above the music, but then Kougami’s smile shifts into something softer, more genuine and she knows he heard.

“My turn to ask, Kougami-san. So tell me, what’s _your_ ideal supposed to look like?” she asks.

He snorts, and she can tell by the way he clenches his hand that he’s itching for a cigarette that he can’t smoke in a no-smoking area. He takes a swig from his drink before answering instead.

“Figured out really quickly that the set-up doesn’t matter as much as the company,” he says.

“That makes sense,” she says. And it does. It’s really not her fault then that the next, _logical_ question springs from her lips without a second thought. “Then what’s your idea of ideal _company_ , Kougami-san?”

The quickening of her heartbeat is solely because of the rapid pulse of the music’s bass. It has absolutely nothing to do with the question. She doesn’t even particularly care about the answer. Really. Though she still holds on tightly to every piece of himself that Kougami offers. And it only makes sense that if she wants to understand him better than she already does, then she should get a sense of what kind of partner he sees as a compliment to his own personality.

The neon lights wash over his face, and she files the quirk of his lip and the glint in his eyes under her mental list of Kougami’s expressions that she doesn’t have a name for.

He leans forward, about to speak, but from her peripheral vision, Akane recognizes the face from the case file and her pulse picks up for an entirely different reason.

“I’ve got eyes on the escapee,” she says, pressing on her earpiece so everyone on the team can hear her. “Green shirt with glasses, near the stage. Hound 3 and I are moving in.”

“ _Be careful, Shepherd 2. Hound 2 and 4, provide back up,”_ Ginoza says.

 _“Just when it was getting interesting,”_ Shion mutters.

“Guess we’re never finishing the game, Kougami-san,” Akane says, the beginnings of adrenaline circulating in her system.

He shakes his head, that unnameable glint still in his eyes. “Never say never, Inspector,” he says, and they’re off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, Shion was listening the whole time. Of course she was. Who wouldn't? And the 20 questions game lives on hooray! I love writing Akane and Kougami just getting to hang out and talk and bond. I like to imagine there are some moments like those that we didn't really get to see in the show.
> 
> I also just wanted to do a quick interest check! I'm planning to do a part 2 of my drabble "hold me like we're going home" and then an update for my PacRim AU, but I was also wondering how interested y'all would be in a fairy tale-ish AU? I just binged Galavant (an EXCELLENT TV show I highly recommend!) and I've been plagued with the idea of Kougami as a once legendary hero who's now a washed-up, fallen from grace knight and Akane as the badass rogue princess who enlists his help for a quest. Probably would be a one-shot instead of a multi-chap if ever.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading! I really, really appreciate each and every comment and kudo <3 your support means everything! You can also find me on tumblr as indy-mickey.


	3. Chapter 3

Working overtime isn’t exactly something Akane intended to become a habit, but there’s always more that needs to be done—more paperwork, more leads to follow up on, more evidence to examine and dots to connect. Akane has never been good at giving up on any kind of puzzle, especially not when the answer feels so tantalizingly within reach. She keeps telling herself she’ll only stay for one more hour, then another, and another until she loses track of time altogether.

Staying way past office hours has jumped from being an occasional occurrence to an almost daily routine, though it’s not like she’s alone when she burns the midnight oil.

For as long as she’s known him, Kougami works late and rises early, and Akane used to wonder if he ever slept or if he really was a cyborg after all. She’s since learned that even he needs rest sometimes, and the first time she caught him taking a cat nap, she marveled at how unguarded his features were.

Tonight though the lines of his face are heavy with stress and she’s sure the fluorescent lighting only emphasizes the dark circles of her eyes in return. The cases at the MWPSB are rarely easy, though this string of murders is proving particularly difficult to crack. As much as Akane would prefer to spend her time doing something more pleasant than staring at grisly murders, she can’t quite make herself pull away just yet.

She swipes through the profiles of the victims, though she’s memorized them at this point. She hovers on the face of the youngest victim then swipes away the image in frustration.

“I just don’t see how the victims are connected,” she mutters. “There doesn’t seem to be a pattern.”

“Are you suggesting the victims are chosen at random?” Kougami asks, looking up from his own copy of the file.

“No, the killer’s approach to everything else is too methodical and calculated to leave such a huge detail of the plan up to chance.”

“I agree. Your profiling’s improving.”

“A lot of good it’s doing me now,” Akane sighs, practically deflating as she slumps in her seat. “I don’t know what I’m missing,” she admits, already reaching to review evidence she’s looked over at least a dozen times. “I feel like it’s right in front of me and yet—”

She’s cut off by a loud growl from her stomach that catches her off-guard. Her hands shoot to her stomach as if to take back the noise, but the effort is futile at best. Embarrassment wars with hunger and a part of her wants to crawl into a hole and hide—preferably with snacks.

“When was the last time you ate, Inspector?” he asks, setting the file down and narrowing his eyes at her.

_Lunch,_ she almost says, but then realizes that she probably skipped lunch when she and Kagari were suddenly called in to check an elevated stress level nearby. The last thing she ate was the breakfast Candy made for her and that was more than 12 hours ago.

Kougami shakes his head, already hearing the answer in her hesitation. Akane knows she’s gotten better at masking her thoughts, but Kougami’s ability to read her has gotten better too.

A protest to stay a little bit longer for the case is poised on the tip of her tongue as she braces herself for him to tell her to go home already, but to her surprise he stands up and shrugs his suit jacket back on instead.

“C’mon,” he says, an expectant eyebrow raised.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“Getting you something to eat.”

“But the case—”

“Will probably benefit from fresh eyes in the morning and a well-fed Inspector at the helm.”

She considers insisting, but now that her appetite’s been awakened, it’s becoming difficult to ignore. “I guess you’re right,” she admits reluctantly, “but it’s not like any place is open at this hour.”

Kougami’s lips quirk in a curious half-smirk. “Who said we were eating out?”

Intrigued, Akane packs up for the day and follows Kougami out into the hall. She expects him to take a turn towards the vending machines, but heads toward the elevator instead. She quirks her head to the side, hesitating as Kougami steps into the elevator.

“I’m no Kagari, but I’m a decent enough cook,” he says. Then, shoving his hands in his pockets in what might be the closest thing to uncertainty, maybe even _shyness_ that Akane’s ever seen from him, he adds, “But if you’re in the mood for AI-prepared hyper oats, I won’t hold it against you.”

_He’s giving me an out,_ she knows, a way to back out before further entangling her personal and professional life. She smiles at the offer and steps into the elevator with him. She already sees Division 1 as her family—it doesn’t get more entangled than that. Besides, she’s had Kagari’s cooking before, so this shouldn’t be any different, though there’s a slight knot in her chest that tells her that it is.

She brushes it off as fatigue.

“And miss the chance to try your food? No way, Kougami-san,” she teases, and his answering smile only makes the knot in her chest tighten even more.

*

Akane has only been in Kougami’s quarters a couple of times in the past and has always thought of the space as being more functional than lived in. Aside from the paperbacks that are stacked neatly onto a set of bookshelves, Kougami doesn’t seem to own much else, content to leave the walls bare and make use of the standard-issue furniture.

Sinking down gratefully onto the couch as Kougami busies himself in the kitchen, Akane wonders what home looked like to Kougami back when he was still an Inspector.

“How does soba sound?” Kougami asks.

“Yes, please!” Akane says, twisting around to fold her arms over the back of the couch to watch him prepare the food. “I love anything with noodles.”

“I know.” His grey eyes meet her surprised gaze for a second before turning his attention back to the food. “You mentioned it during 20 questions.”

“You remember that?”

He shrugs. “Course. Wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t care about the answer.”

And for the first time since she met him, Akane considers the possibility that perhaps he’s as intrigued by her as she is by him, that he too tucks away the pieces of her he’s gleaned from the year they’ve been working together. Masaoka once told her that they’re bound by fate, though she never really allowed herself to consider the thought that the instinctive connection she feels isn’t entirely one-sided. Until now.

The thought warms her to her toes.

“Thank you,” she says, her voice earnest and soft.

Pausing mid-stir, he doesn’t ask which part she’s thanking him for. He doesn’t need to. “Anytime, Tsunemori.”

She watches him cook, still fascinated with the process. Her own family never bothered with actual cooking, finding AI-prepared hyperoats more efficient. Kagari, on the other hand, always adds extra flare to his movements when he cooks, aware he’s being watched and more than happy to show off his skills. Kougami’s movements are more efficient, quick and well-practiced. There’s something calming about it. Steadying. The smell of the food makes her mouth water.

“So where’d you learn to cook?” she asks. “I’m pretty sure I had at least one more question left in our game.”

He hums, unconvinced, but answers anyway. “Mama taught me,” he says, his voice inflected with the same fondness that it always carries when he talks about his mother.

“Do you miss her?”

“I call her sometimes,” he says in lieu of answering the question directly. “But I haven’t seen her in a while, not since…” _since I became an Enforcer._

“I could take you to see her some time if you want.”

He doesn’t say anything right away, and with his back turned to her, she almost thinks she’s overstepped her bounds, but then he turns to her with an expression almost as unguarded as his face when he’s sleeping and her heart does a strange two-step in her chest. “I’d like that,” he says.

When the food is ready, Akane takes her first bite more eagerly than she intends to, and Kougami watches her surprised delight in amusement.

“This is good!” she says.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he teases.

She waves her hand dismissively, then leans forward eagerly as an idea occurs to her. “Do you think you could teach me?”

“Teach you the recipe?”

“How to cook in general. Kagari says I’m terrible at it, but in my defense, he’s a terrible teacher! Maybe with some better training—”

Kougami’s brow furrows at Akane’s abrupt pause, her eyes narrowing before her gaze flicks to his.

“That’s it! It’s the _train!_ ” Akane exclaims.

“That’s how the victims are connected,” he realizes.

They discuss train routes and addresses in between bites of soba, buzzing with the energy that comes from making a breakthrough in a case.

After that, discussing cases over dinner in Kougami’s quarters isn’t exactly something Akane intended to become a habit, but it’s something they fall into naturally, and by the time Akane notices, it’s become routine. Some nights, he teaches her how to cook, though most of her food ends up becoming an odd mix of burnt and undercooked. And sometimes, on particularly rare nights given their line of work, there aren’t any cases to discuss at all. They talk and tell stories and Akane finds it’s every bit as gratifying as a breakthrough in a case.

After a couple of months, heading to Kougami’s quarters with him becomes second nature, so second nature, in fact, that neither of them notices that across the hall, someone else smiles, having begun to take note of the routine as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ngl I struggled with this chapter. It's been languishing in my drafts for a few weeks then I got killer headaches that completely shot my productivity for a while. I'm still not 100% pleased with this chapter just yet and I think it's a little weak compared to my other stuff buuuuut I'm learning not to be too hard on myself! I'm just happy to be putting stuff out there again! Back to normal programming (hopefully) with more regular updates! 
> 
> Anyways, as always, comments and kudos give me life, so please consider leaving one if you enjoyed this chapter <3 You can also find me on tumblr as indy-mickey where I talk about fandom and fic sometimes.

**Author's Note:**

> The season 1 ShinKane dynamic was adorable and I tried my best to capture that here (hopefully it worked?) 
> 
> Anyways, comments are very welcome and I'd love to hear what you think! You can also find me on tumblr as indy-mickey <3


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